The surgical treatment of snoring

We congratulate Harries and his colleagues for their timely review article on 'The surgical treatment of snoring' (Harries et al, 1996). A variety of surgical procedures for the treatment of snoring have been described in the literature over the last two or three years and, in addition to Harries, misgivings concerning the lack of standardization apparent from these reports, we would like to add two further worries. These are; firstly the conspicuous lack of a control group in every published study to date on the surgical treatment of snoring, and also the absence of an agreed method for reporting outcomes. If we are to introduce treatment methods for snoring which are acceptable to our purchasers the onus rests upon us as a speciality to demonstrate the efficacy of these techniques. To this end we think it essential that those of us who are involved in the surgical treatment of snoring and sleep apnoea should have an agreed system for reporting results. What we have in mind is something akin to the criteria agreed by the American Academy of Otolaryngology/Head & Neck Surgery in respect of any treatment of Meniere's disease and indeed of conductive hearing loss (Pearson and Brackman, 1985; Goldenburg and Burliner, 1995). These have helped in ensuring that clinical trials have had a definite focus and we would be interested in hearing the views of other workers in the field of snoring/ sleep apnoea as to how we could agree reporting criteria.